Long before Andy Martinez recorded Race the Buzzard Home, we were a couple of kids hanging around the Lubbock, Texas punk rock scene. One night during my junior year, we ended up where teenage punk rockers in Lubbock tended to end up: Denny’s. It was a late night of just chatting, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and writing lyrics in my spiral. Andy gave me a ride home, and I accidentally left my notebook in his car. He found it a few weeks later and returned it to me. When he gave it back, he asked me if I had written the lyrics. I sheepishly said yes, not knowing if he enjoyed them as I was a very green lyricist. He said, “These are badass.” It was the first time anyone had complimented my lyrics. That stuck with me forever. For Andy, it may have been a casual compliment between friends. For the rookie songwriter hearing someone validate his writing for the first time, it became something I have carried for decades.
Released on October 6, 2006 and now celebrating its 20th anniversary, Andy Martinez’s Race The Buzzard Home lives in that wonderfully dusty intersection between Texas singer-songwriter music, alternative country, and roots rock. It is introspective, dark Texas Americana about damaged people trying to find home, love, escape, or oblivion; and frequently confusing one for another. The darkness is constantly undercut by wonderfully screwed-up little observations and the occasional pop-culture reference. Home on this record isn’t necessarily comforting. It’s dying trees, uncut grass, broken beer bottles, dysfunctional families, bars, cigarettes, booze, people hurting each other, and people desperately wanting to be loved anyway. Mostly autobiographical, Race The Buzzard Home is an intimate look into Martinez’s struggles, desires, and personal experiences with lovers, friends, and family. Growing up in Lubbock gave him plenty of material: the album stops feeling like a collection of invented alt-country characters as he takes recognizable pieces of his world and turns them slightly sideways into stories. And he rarely explains them. He gives you the image and gets out of the way.
Martinez has a weathered, gravelly voice reminiscent of Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker and Tom Waits that makes the songs sound lived rather than performed. There’s booze, bad decisions, damaged relationships, family baggage, loneliness, and the general feeling of a guy attempting to outrun something that knows exactly where he lives. The result reminds me of the territory occupied by Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, early Ryan Bingham, and Richard Buckner; not necessarily because Martinez sounds exactly like any of them, but because he shares their preference for imperfection, characters with mileage on them, and songs where consequences matter. His influences weren’t necessarily Texas country either. They were Cary Swinney, Dirty Three, Fred Eaglesmith, and Richard Buckner, which paints a much stranger and more interesting picture: West Texas songwriting mixed with indie/post-rock atmosphere and character-driven roots music. In fact, it was Richard Buckner’s Bloomed album that lead Martinez to the talented Alan Crossland and Route 1, Acuff Studios. Crossland’s work on Bloomed (with an appearance by Lloyd Maines) made Andy want “any part of that sound for” himself. Alan Crossland has worked with an incredible cast of musicians including The Chicks, Pat Green, and Gary P. Nunn and is known to work quickly with no time wasted looking over his shoulder or questioning any decisions. This was the perfect formula for staying on budget for the self-funded Race The Buzzard Home, and the only studio Martinez would recommend having all steps (tracking, mixing and mastering) completed by one person.
Then there is the amazing cast of players on the album. Among them is Lubbock legend Lloyd Maines, whose resumé is far too long to list but includes contributions to records by Robert Earl Keen, Wilco, and Charlie Robison; and future Grammy winner and fiddle darling Amanda Shires, who at the time was still playing with Lubbock’s Thrift Store Cowboys. Also featured are Brad Ivy and Zach Davis, founding members and the original rhythm section of alt-country/cow-punk band Rattlesnake Milk; Martinez’s former Burn The Wagon bandmate and fellow veteran of the late-’90s Lubbock punk rock scene, guitarist/vocalist Jake Unruh; and Shires’ Thrift Store Cowboys bandmate, guitarist Colt Miller, who would go on to found the popular Marfa boot shop Cobra Rock. This wasn’t a hired studio band assembled around Andy. It was largely a community of musicians and friends documenting a moment in the Lubbock scene. There are albums built around hired session players, and then there are albums like this made with friends who just so happen to be incredible, world-class musicians. Sometimes the stars align under a shared West Texas sky.
Long before Andy Martinez recorded Race the Buzzard Home, we were a couple of kids hanging around the Lubbock, Texas punk rock scene. Decades later, I stumbled across his solo record online and bought it on a whim. When it arrived, I listened to it four times in a row, taking in these songs written by a friend I hadn’t seen in years. As each song played, there was something strangely familiar in the experiences: the brokenness, the love, the pain, the humor, and the vulnerability. Something that felt unmistakably like it came from a kid who grew up in Lubbock.
And somewhere deep inside, an old familiar voice echoed three words back to me:
“These are badass.”
Buy yourself a copy of this incredible gem of an album at Andy Martinez’s Bandcamp:
Born in Blood: What an opener. Immediately establishes Andy’s writing style: attraction, danger, sex, and mortality are all mashed together. Even something beautiful has violence lurking underneath it. The chorus reduces everything to a fatalistic little equation: we’re born bloody, we’re going to die bloody, and everything between those two events is basically us crossing our fingers.
Sweet Nothing: Some of my favorite lyrics on the album. Andy takes the phrase “sweet nothing” and completely screws with it, simultaneously fantasizing about domesticity and recoiling from it.
Playing Dead: Some of the sweetest instrumentation on the album. The beauty of the violin, the shuffle beat, the easy guitar picking, and Andy’s softest delivery. The lyrics tell a different and dark story running counter to the feel. Absolutely brilliant songwriting.
Race the Buzzard Home: The title track and the album’s thesis: damaged people, damaged places, and the strange things that still feel like home. About returning to a person/place that is dysfunctional and familiar enough to still register as home.
Head Full of Crazy: Andy’s favorite track on the album. The quickest written song on the album, it was written in a few days while in process of basic tracking. A terrific closing burst of emotional messiness and vulnerability.
“Well, I hope you’re bitter now all on your own ‘Cause I hate your heart ‘Cause it’s cold, like mine Well, I hope you’re better now on your own ‘Cause I hate your heart ‘Cause it’s cold, like mine”
-“Race The Buzzard Home”, Andy Martinez (2006)
The Bronco Buster rides in with the same rough edges and restless heart as Race The Buzzard Home by Andy Martinez. Rye brings the bite, Applejack a little warmth, while lemon and dry curaçao sharpen everything around the edges. It’s strong, tart, a little unruly, and somehow all those competing parts find a way to belong together. That feels right for this record. Race The Buzzard Home is full of people looking for love, looking for escape, having another drink, making bad decisions, and occasionally finding comfort in places they probably shouldn’t. Dying trees, uncut grass, broken beer bottles, cigarettes, and coffee somehow, as Andy sings, all “feels like home.”
Together, the Bronco Buster and Race The Buzzard Home feel like a late-night drive through West Texas with the past riding shotgun. There’s grit in both, but there’s humor, tenderness, and heart underneath it. They’re a little bruised, a little bitter and rough around the edges. And I wouldn’t want either one any other way.
BRONCO BUSTER
1 oz rye
1 oz Apple Jack
3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz dry curaçao
Combine all ingredients in ice filled shaker. Shake.
